---
title: "A 1.7 GB Folder, a Hidden Pointer, and Eight Open Sessions"
canonical: https://dxdev.com/everyday-ai/folder-move-i-had-to-do-with/
datePublished: 2026-05-21
---
The C: drive on our computer had **230 MB** free out of 231 GB. That is less room than many phone photos take up. One obvious place to make space was a [1.7 GB folder holding conversation records](/blog/cant-repoint-a-junction-under-live-file-handles/) and a browser testing profile. It was big enough to matter, and we had another drive with room to spare.

At first, the job looked like moving a box from a crowded closet to the garage. We wanted to put the folder on the G: drive while leaving a sign at the old spot, so the programs that expected to find it on C: would still find it. Windows calls that sign a **junction**. It is a hidden pointer that sends a program from the old folder address to the new one.

That would have been fine if nobody was using the folder. But they were. About eight active sessions were still adding to their own conversation records inside it. In everyday terms, we were trying to move a filing cabinet while several people still had drawers open and were putting papers in them.

## The plan that failed

The first plan was the tempting one. Copy everything to the new drive, remove the old folder, then put the pointer in its place. It did not work, and it should not have worked. Windows would not let the old folder be removed because files inside it were in use. The first attempt cost time at exactly the point when the [nearly full drive](/blog/checkpoint-never-fired-nobody-checked/) was already demanding attention. It also exposed a worse problem than a refused command.

Changing the sign on a filing cabinet does not make someone with an open drawer suddenly start using a different cabinet. A program opens a file once, then keeps working with that same open file. If we had somehow forced the folder move while those sessions were active, the older sessions could have kept writing to the old place while newly opened files went to G:. The records would have been split between two locations. Nothing would necessarily pop up to say that had happened.

A split with no warning was the risk. A visible error is annoying, but at least it tells you to stop. Two sets of records that both look normal can leave you believing everything was moved when part of the story is still being written somewhere else.

What we took from it is simpler than the computer language around it: changing a folder address only helps programs that open the folder afterward. It does not change the place where an already open file is being written.

## Doing it cold

Once we understood that, this stopped being a clever computer trick and became a question of order. The folder had to be cold. In plain English, everything using it had to be closed first. We were not going to do a delicate move in the same busy window where the storage problem had appeared.

So we prepared a small set of instructions to run later, when every active session was closed. Before it touched anything, it checked three things. First, it stopped if the relevant program was still running. Second, it stopped if a folder already existed at the new destination, because that could mean an earlier move had been interrupted. Third, it stopped if the old folder was already a pointer, because that would mean the change had already happened.

Only after those checks did it copy the files and compare the number of files in each place. It did not immediately throw away the original. Instead, it renamed the old folder as a backup, put the pointer in place, and restored the backup if that step failed. The original copy would be removed by hand only after the new arrangement had been confirmed to work.

That backup matters for the same reason you keep the old key until you know the new key opens the door. It leaves a way back. The checks turn a hope, "we think we closed everything," into a question the computer can answer before it makes a change that is hard to undo.

## Keeping the clutter from coming back

We also dealt with why the C: drive had filled in the first place. Two places on the computer, a program download cache and the temporary files area, were still growing on C:. We redirected those to G: as a separate settings change. That did not carry the same risk, because it was not trying to relocate files that active sessions already had open. It kept new clutter from returning to the same cramped closet.

A move can look simple while work is still happening inside it. Before changing where a shared folder, inbox, spreadsheet or service lives, ask who still has it open and what the safe way back is if the new arrangement fails. Close everything that uses it first, keep the original until the new arrangement is confirmed, and have the move check its own starting conditions.